Author: pinestrawmag

Tea Leaf Astrologer

Leo

(July 23 – August 22)

No surprise: You’re in the driver’s seat this month, kiddo — just the way you like it. Control is a clever little temptress. With Venus retrograde in Leo until September 3, you can expect more than a few obstacles to arise in relation to an old flame. Navigate wisely, resisting the urge to make any brash or sudden detours. Clarity will return. In the meantime, crack the windows, crank up the tunes and celebrate this wild and precious life with lionhearted exuberance.

Tea leaf “fortunes” for the rest of you:

Virgo (August 23 – September 22)

To thine own self be kind.

Libra (September 23 – October 22)

There’s a balm for that.

Scorpio (October 23 – November 21)

Don’t let the muck get the best of you.

Sagittarius (November 22 – December 21)

Finish what you started.

Capricorn (December 22 – January 19)

Lather, rinse and repeat.

Aquarius (January 20 – February 18)

Keep the kindling dry.

Pisces (February 19 – March 20)

Big feelings? Release them with paint.

Aries (March 21 – April 19)

Someone needs a time-out.

Taurus (April 20 – May 20)

The irony won’t be lost on you for long.

Gemini (May 21 – June 20)

Inaction speaks louder than words.

Cancer (June 21 – July 22)

Does “toxic productivity” mean anything to you? PS

Zora Stellanova has been divining with tea leaves since Game of Thrones’ Starbucks cup mishap of 2019. While she’s not exactly a medium, she’s far from average. She lives in the N.C. foothills with her Sphynx cat, Lyla.

PS PROfiles 2023

2023 Profiles

Simple Life

Let There Be Darkness

In defense of the dark side

By Jim Dodson

During a business trip to a remote part of New Zealand last winter, I was reminded of the staggering beauty of the night. Stepping out of my bungalow just after midnight, the stars of the Southern Hemisphere took my breath away. There were untold millions of them arching overhead, blazing like white diamonds on black velvet.

Because it was summer down under, there were also vivid sounds of calling night birds and insects murmuring in the fields and forests around me. I sat down on a wooden rocking chair and just listened for the better part of an hour, a perfect bedtime lullaby that reminded me of my daily wake-up routine back home in North Carolina.

Well before sunrise most days, I take my coffee outside to sit beneath a grove of old trees and wait for the first songbird to herald the breaking day. Save for an occasional passing train or distant siren that briefly mars the silence, it’s the stillest part of any day, the perfect moment to think, meditate, pray or just be.

I’ve captured the first birdsong many times on my handy Cornell Lab Merlin Bird app. In my neck of the suburban woods, it’s usually a Carolina wren or eastern towhee that breaks the serenity of pre-dawn. Sometimes it’s the northern cardinal or melodious song sparrow who takes lead solo. Every now and then, a great horned owl or brown thrasher cues the chorus. Whichever one starts, as sure as night is dark, a chorus of a dozen or more birds soon joins the songfest, including gray catbirds, mourning doves and American crows.

I never tire of this avian awakening, finding a sense of true gratitude for my tiny spot on Earth as a new day begins.

And yet, I worry.

Last year, a report from National Audubon on the state of birds reported that the U.S. and Canada have lost 3 billion birds over the past half-century. The same report notes that half of America’s bird populations are in decline, prompting more than one expert to warn that we are already in the early throes of the Earth’s sixth mass extinction.

Global warming, loss of natural habitat, various forms of pollution and the fact that the night is no longer as dark as it used to be are cited as primary contributing factors to the decline of thousands of species of birds, insects, reptiles and mammals, roughly half of which hunt, mate, feed and travel by night. Disappearing forests accelerate this decline.

Historian Jill Lapore echoes similar concerns in a recent New Yorker essay titled “What We Owe Our Trees:”

“Even if you haven’t been to the woods lately, you probably know that the forest is disappearing. In the past 10,000 years, the Earth has lost about a third of its forests, which wouldn’t be so worrying if it weren’t for the fact that almost all that loss has happened in the past 300 years or so. As much forest has been lost in the past hundred years as in the 9,000 before. With the forest go the worlds within those woods, each habitat and dwelling place, a universe within each rotting log, a galaxy within a pinecone. And, unlike earlier losses of forests, owing to ice and fire, volcanoes, comets, and earthquakes — actuarially acts of God — nearly all the destruction in the past three centuries has been done deliberately, by people actuarially at fault: cutting down trees to harvest wood, plant crops and graze animals.”

So what is an ordinary, suburban nature-lover and bird nut to do? That depends, I suppose, partly, at least, how you grew up.

I sometimes joke that I grew up in darkness.

I had the privilege to grow up in a succession of sleepy Southern towns, following my dad’s itinerant newspaper career. From the coast of Mississippi to the Carolinas, Yeats’ proverbial “The Stolen Child,” with an imagination fired by nature, I explored woods and creeks, bringing home frogs and injured birds. The rule was, I had to be home by “full” darkness. Many an evening, I lingered in the twilight just to watch the fireflies come out and listen for the sounds of crickets, bullfrogs and night birds. In those days, the streetlights in these quiet rural towns were few.

I’m not speaking, mind you, of the metaphorical darkness showcased by everything from the Bible’s rich imagery of light and darkness (good and evil) to modern cable TV’s endless news loops of crime and disaster. There’s a perfectly good reason why depression is rightly called a “dark night of the soul.” Anyone who has experienced it might be forgiven for believing that the world is coming apart at the seams.

Thirty years ago, in an effort to give our children the benefits of a quieter, natural world, my wife and I built our house on a coastal Maine hilltop surrounded by a dense forest of beech and hemlock, where the nights were deep and woods teemed with animal life.

The first thing I did when we moved back to my hometown neighborhood seven years ago was plant 20 trees around the property. Today in summer, our house sits in a grove of beautiful trees. The neighborhood is called Starmount Forest, after all, and most residents appreciate the giant oaks, maples and poplar trees that still arch like druid elders throughout. Living up to the name, these trees provide home to a rich variety of birds and insects. They also give us welcome shade in summer and showcase the stars on winter nights.

Turning down the lights at night strikes me as one small but sensible act of kindness to nature, encouraging the living world around us to rest, so moths and other nighttime creatures can pollinate plants, fertilizing the start of the world’s food chain.

In her lovely spiritual memoir Learning to Walk in the Dark, theologian Barbara Brown Taylor points out that most of the monsters we fear in the dark are simply phantoms we create in our anxious, sleep-deprived minds.

“I have learned things in the dark that I could never have learned in the light,” she writes. “Things that have saved my life over and over again, so that there is really only one logical conclusion. I need darkness as much as I need light.”

I was reminded of this fact one morning at summer’s beginning while awaiting my woodland wake-up call. Savoring the pre-dawn stillness beneath the trees, I suddenly realized that the fireflies had returned, magical messengers of hope that would be nowhere without the night.

As August passes over us and the days grow shorter, the darkness grows.

I say, bring it on, dear neighbors, and sleep well. PS

Jim Dodson can be reached at jwdauthor@gmail.com.

2023 Department Simple Life

Emily Good + Tim Kenny

Emily Good and Tim Kenny met on Hinge in 2019. Little did they know, Emily’s grandparents and Tim’s great aunt and uncle had been lifelong friends since they met on a flight to Bermuda for their honeymoons nearly seven decades ago.

Two years into dating, Emily and Tim were hosting friends and family for a Fourth of July barbecue. “I ran around for weeks getting the menu together and the decorations and yard games ready,” Emily says. On the day of, Tim pulled out a ring box and dropped to one knee. “I had unknowingly planned my own engagement party,” Emily says.

The following July, the bride and groom said “I do” at Emily’s childhood church, Sacred Heart Catholic Church, in Pinehurst. The bride’s uncle Mark, who is a priest in Charleston, South Carolina, traveled north to marry his niece.

After the wedding mass ended, the Sandhills Trolley Company shuttled guests across town to the celebrate the newlyweds with an evening of dinner and dancing at The Fair Barn.

photographer: Jennifer B. Photography
videographer: Story Focused Weddings
wedding planner: Vision Events Wedding & Event Planning
ceremony: Sacred Heart Catholic Church
reception: The Fair Barn
dress: Landon by Amsale
shoes: ASOS
hair & makeup: Lindsey Webster, Brush and Beauty
bridesmaids: “Reception Dress” by ELLIAT
groom & groomsmen: Men’s Warehouse
cake: The Bakehouse
catering: Elliotts on Linden
flowers: Hollyfield Design Inc.
rentals: Ward Productions and Greenhouse Picker Sisters
invitations: The Knot
transportation: Sandhills Trolley Company and Kirk Tours & Limousine

2024

Simple Life

The Wish Book’s Final Chapter

Saying a fond farewell to Sears’ last remaining North Carolina store

By Jim Dodson

I learned that the last Sears department store in North Carolina — honest-to-goodness brick and mortar store — was closing. Out of simple curiosity, and a dose of nostalgia, I went to pay my respects.

Truthfully, I hadn’t set foot in our local shopping center’s Sears since purchasing a new Craftsman lawnmower there more than five years ago. Happy to report, it’s been a fine mower.

Before that, my last visit to Sears was probably as a kid in the mid-1960s when, fueled by the firm’s famous “Wish Book” Christmas catalog, every kid I knew haunted the toy department at the downtown Sears retail store during the run-up weeks to the holiday. My first bicycle came from Sears, and was later parked outside the store the year my buddy Brad and I innocently drifted from the toy department into the adjacent lingerie department to stare in wonder at the display mannequins in all their undergarmented glory. As she escorted us to the exit doors, the unamused clerk with the pointy-blue eyeglasses refused to believe we were simply looking for presents for our moms.

That iconic downtown store, in any case, is now a giant hole in the ground, awaiting construction of a swanky office building as time, life and commerce march resolutely on.

Let’s pause and have a moment of fond reflection for — as Smithsonian recently described it — “The retail giant that taught America how to shop.”

Sears began modestly in 1887 when a former railway lumber salesman named Richard Sears moved to Chicago to partner with an Indiana watchmaker named Alvah Roebuck to launch a catalog selling jewelry and watches. Both men were still in their 20s. Six years later, they incorporated as Sears, Roebuck and Company, putting out a 500-page catalog that sold everything an American farmer or thrift-conscious housewife could ask for at a “fair price,” shipped directly to the customer.

In a nation where most Americans still resided on farms or in small towns, this marketing model exploded like a prairie fire, fueling the growth of urban factories. Even Henry Ford was said to have studied the Sears marketing model for making and selling his cars. The company’s first stock certificates were sold in 1906. “If you picked up a big enough chunk of stock when the company went public,” writes Investopedia, “you’d never have to work again.”

The first Sears retail store opened in Chicago in 1925. Four years later, on the eve of the Great Depression, the company was operating 300 stores around the country. By the mid-1950s, the number topped 700. By then, the corporation’s reliable Kenmore appliances, lifetime-guaranteed Craftsman tools, DieHard auto batteries and Allstate Insurance were beloved household names in America’s ballooning mass consumer culture. The stores followed the consumer’s migration from Main Street to shopping centers and, eventually, suburban malls.

Perhaps the company’s most enduring product line was introduced in 1908 when a Sears executive named Frank Kushel came up with the idea of kit houses sold through a specialty catalog called “The Book of Modern Homes and Building Plans,” offering 44 styles of mail-order homes ranging in price from $360 to $2,890. Generally shipped by rail, house packages provided everything down to screws and nails, including pre-cut and numbered framing lumber, flooring, doorknobs, wiring and plumbing.

Between 1908 and 1947, an estimated 75,000 Sears kit houses — from Bungalow to English Cottage, Craftsman to Queen Anne — were shipped to Americans. Old House Journal notes that unknown Frank Kushel’s Modern Home Program wielded as much impact on the development of American architecture as famous contemporary Frank Lloyd Wright.

Sears boasted that its houses were built to last, explaining why thousands of them remain highly prized, lovingly restored jewels in older neighborhoods across America, relics of a bygone golden consumer age.

By the 1970s, the firm owned the tallest skyscraper in the world in Chicago, was among the first to introduce home internet services, and jumped into the real estate, credit card and financial services businesses.

Perhaps it was too much for the gods of commerce to tolerate. Critics pointed to the company’s legal affrays over sex and race discrimination and a business model fueled by corporate hubris.

In 1993, just shy of its 100th anniversary, Sears discontinued its famous catalog. Walmart was now the nation’s leading retailer, and Americans were suddenly buying things “online.” One year later, a former hedge fund guru named Jeff Bezos started up an online book service called Amazon, pretty much putting the finishing nail in the coffin of the historic brand. After 75 years on Wall Street, Home Depot took Sears’ place on the Dow Industrials. As the company’s sales steadily spiraled downward, a forced marriage with K-Mart in 2004 failed to stem the hemorrhage.

In January 2017, shortly before I purchased my Craftsman mower, the iconic tool brand was sold off to Stanley Black & Decker.

Less than a year later, in October 2018, Sears filed for bankruptcy.

Last December, the company emerged from bankruptcy but announced the liquidation and closing of all its remaining stores. According to reports, less than a dozen made it to this spring. Only one in North Carolina.

Which is why, out of some strange, old fashioned sense of brand loyalty or happy memories of lawn mowers and provocative lingerie mannequins, I felt a final farewell trip was in order.

Bright yellow “Going Out of Business” banners festooned the building. I wandered through looking at the remaining stock items. Fifty-percent bargains were everywhere. I looked at Kenmore refrigerators, top-line Samsung dishwashers and GE Elite ovens, all half-price.

I decided on a lightweight Craftsman toolbox to remember the place by, a steal at $27.

On my way out, I paused to chat with a clerk, Janice, who has worked for Sears for more than two decades. “It makes me really sad to think that Sears is going away for good,” she said. “Like millions of Americans, everything in my house as a young married woman came from Sears. I guess nothing lasts forever, does it?”

She surprised me with a sudden, feisty grin. “You know, I think if we’d only stuck with catalogs, by golly, we’d have beaten Amazon and still be going strong!”

I loved her company spirit. I wished her well.

Then I went home to mow my lawn.

Whenever the math of this world doesn’t quite add up — when the sad subtractions outnumber the hopeful additions, or vice versa — I find temporary comfort by mowing my lawn. Crazy, I know. But it briefly puts things in perspective.

Besides, my Craftsman mower never lets me down. PS

Jim Dodson can be reached at jwdauthor@gmail.com.

2023 Department Simple Life

Birdwatch

Rare and Mysterious

On the lookout for the unusual white hummingbird

By Susan Campbell

If you happen to look out the window and see a flash of white at your hummingbird feeder or flowers, you may not be seeing things. Late summer is when I receive at least a report or two from hosts who have glimpsed a rare pale-colored hummingbird. Given the number of people who feed hummers here in North Carolina, birds in unusual plumage tend to get noticed. And given the network of bird enthusiasts I am familiar with, reports of unusual hummingbirds find their way to my phone or computer pretty quickly.

White hummingbirds include both leucistic (pale individuals) as well as true albinos (completely lacking pigment). Gray or tan hummers are more likely than full albinos. Light-colored individuals have normal, dark-colored soft parts such as dark eyes, feet and bills. Albinos, on the other hand, are very rare. These snow-white birds that sport pink eyes, feet and bills have been documented fewer than 10 times in our state. Only three have been banded and studied closely here to date.

It is not unusual for people to think they are seeing a moth rather than a hummingbird when they encounter a white individual. They do not realize that these beautiful creatures are possible. As much as we now know that they do exist, we know very little about white hummingbirds. Opportunities to study these unique individuals are few and far between. What we do know is that they tend to appear in July or August as young of the year and do not survive into their second year. White feathers are very brittle and likely cannot withstand the stresses of rapid wing beats and long-distance migration. Another curious characteristic is that all of these eye-catching birds have been female. So it is likely that, for whatever reason, this trait is genetically sex-linked.

The first white hummer that I managed to band was a creamy bird in Taylortown a number of years ago. She was an aggressive individual that roamed the neighborhood terrorizing the other ruby-throateds. The first true albino I documented was in Apex in Wake County, and that individual was even more aggressive; chasing all of the other birds that made the mistake of entering her airspace. For me to have a chance to study a white hummer, I must get word of it quickly before the bird heads out on fall migration. I have missed more than one by less than 24 hours.

The last white hummer I had the privilege to examine close up was an albino a decade ago in Washington, N.C. A mostly white hummingbird gave me the slip in Charlotte four years ago. So, I am way overdue to band yet another. Who knows who I might encounter this season? Each one is so unique. I simply hope to at least hear about another of these tiny marvels before all of the hummingbirds in the central part of our state have headed south. PS

Susan Campbell would love to receive your wildlife sightings and photographs at susan@ncaves.com.

2023 Birdwatch Department

Sporting Life

The Old Home Place

Where have the small farmers gone?

By Tom Bryant

As I slowly rocked back and forth in one of Mama’s old rockers, I suddenly realized that I didn’t know a single solitary farmer anymore. It was quite a revelation in as much as my father was the first in our family not to make a living on the farm.

Linda, my bride, and I were visiting my sister who lives in the old home place in South Carolina. We had been reminiscing about old times and catching up on the latest news from the family. It was mid-July and hot, as only July can be in the low country. The ladies were inside putting together a light lunch, and I was suffering through the heat on the front porch of the ancient Southern house.

Built in 1830, the vintage old home was constructed to handle the Southern heat. A long rain porch supported by columns stretched across the front of the house. The structure was constructed so that it faced east to utilize the prevailing winds. It also rested on brick foundation posts about 5 feet off the ground. Inside, 14-foot ceilings dispersed the heat, and 6-foot windows helped what breeze there was to circulate.

It was still July, though, and hot. My sister had installed air-conditioning when Mom was still alive, and it made all the difference. But I remembered earlier times when the only real way to cool off was to take a dip in Black Creek, a little stream that slowly meandered down the northern border of the property.

My Uncle Tommy was the last to plant the cleared acreage of the farm, growing corn, wheat, soybeans and cotton. As a youngster, I can remember cotton stretching to the horizon like a new snowfall, and then later, there was a green sea of tobacco.

Tobacco was the money crop in the ’50s, ’60s and early ’70s. My granddad planted many acres of tobacco, and I used to follow him around as he checked on his growing crop. He often said that the best fertilizer a farmer could have are his footsteps in the field, and we sure made a bunch of those.

I never really understood how tobacco allotments were given to growers — even though Granddad tried to explain it to me a time or two — but after doing a little research, I found that, like with a lot of things that involved money, the government held forth. They imposed production limits on individual tobacco growers but guaranteed an artificially high price for the crop. That policy maintained order in the tobacco growing business for years and kept many small farms alive. A farmer in those early days could realize an average profit of $2,000 an acre, enough to keep him down on the farm.

Farming has changed in tremendous ways. A good example would be our own homestead, which was broken up and inherited by different members of the family. No one actually works the land, but the cleared farm acreage is leased to huge conglomerates who bring in giant agriculture equipment and plant hundreds of acres in a short period of time. When harvest season rolls around, they gather the crop in the same way, in and out quickly with little manual labor involved.

In the days of tobacco growing on Granddad’s place, I learned the hard way how much work it took to grow a good crop and, more than that, how much real labor it took to harvest. Priming tobacco, or picking the leaves for curing in the barn, was designed to make men out of boys, or so said Granddad. I never had to do a lot of that dirty, mind-numbing labor, just enough to satisfy me that I wasn’t cut out for it. After a day in the field, I would return to the kitchen porch of the old house, sticky and black with tobacco tar. Grandmother greeted me, saying, “Hose off all that dirt before you come in and mess up my kitchen.”

Over the years I’ve had baths and showers in wonderful places, but nothing could beat the pleasure of standing under that cold, streaming hose after a blistering day under a South Carolina summer sun.

Nothing stays the same, and agriculture is no different. The days of small farms are gone forever.

A soft breeze began to blow out of the east, offering a little relief from the July sun, and as I watched a big red-tail hawk fly lazy circles in the cloudless sky, I thought back to an encounter I had with big tobacco when I was still doing my day job.

Business North Carolina magazine hired me after I decided to come out of early retirement. I realized that I needed something constructive to do other than fish and hunt. Linda agreed with that decision whole-heartedly. The organization made me regional sales manager of the Triad area of North Carolina.

My territory included Danville, Virginia, home of Debrell Brothers Tobacco, an old established company going back to 1873. This tobacco business purchases, processes and sells leaf tobacco, and operates as an importer and exporter. They do business in 24 countries throughout North America, Europe, the Middle East, the Far East and South America.

I learned long ago in the selling business, if you don’t ask, how can you tell if a potential customer wants your product? It took several months of phone calls and messages, but eventually I wrangled an appointment to meet with the marketing director and a couple of his assistants about a special promotion that BNC had in the works.

I was up and at ’em early the morning of our meeting. When I’m in a new area I try to be a little early. A few extra minutes sometimes can save you a lot of trouble. Today would reinforce that notion.

I pulled into Danville in plenty of time to get a cup of coffee at the local McDonald’s. I sat in the old Bronco sipping coffee and going over the presentation I had put together the evening before. My briefcase was open on the passenger’s seat, and noticing the time, I put everything back in the case and eased into traffic heading to the Debrell office. As I neared a railroad track crossing, the car in front of me stopped suddenly. I still had half a cup of coffee, and the abrupt stop dumped it right into my open briefcase.

Disaster.

What to do? My appointment was in 15 minutes. I pulled in the parking lot of the office, hopped out, got the soggy media kits out of the case and used a wad of Kleenex to try and sop up the rest of the coffee that was staining everything. It was time for the meeting with people I had never met before.

Well, I thought, in for a penny, in for a pound.

The receptionist was sitting well back in the corner of the entrance to the offices. A hall led down the center of the building. Everything was mahogany and polished brass, accented with deep oriental rugs. The entire place reeked of money.

After I introduced myself she said, “Your meeting will be in the central conference room. I’ll walk you back there.”

The marketing director and his assistants were waiting and cordially greeted me as I entered the opulent space. Paintings of farm scenes, mostly featuring tobacco, were on the spacious walls.

After everyone was settled, the receptionist asked if she could get me some coffee. The other folks were sipping theirs from china cups and looking at me expectantly.

“Well, ma’am,” I hesitantly said, “I just had a cup. Most of it is still in my briefcase.”

I then pulled the soggy media kits from my case, holding them so they wouldn’t drip on the rugs. After I explained the particulars of the mishap, it took a while for them to stop laughing.

They bought a six-month contract with their first ad to appear in Business North Carolina’s special promotion. It proved my theory: You never know what to expect in the selling business.

The marketing director walked me to the door, and on the way we talked about the future of tobacco.

“Tom,” he said, “since the government has done away with the allotment program that guaranteed tobacco prices, there’s nothing a small farmer can grow that will replace that income. You remember all those small tobacco farms you passed on the way up here? In five years they’ll all be gone.”

Linda came out on the porch. “Time for lunch.” she said. “What have you been doing out here in the hot?”

“Thinking about farming.” I replied, “and small farmers and wondering what they’re doing now.” PS

Tom Bryant, a Southern Pines resident, is a lifelong outdoorsman and PineStraw’s Sporting Life columnist.

2023 Department Sporting Life

Bookshelf

July Books

FICTION

The Displacements, by Bruce Holsinger

To all appearances, the Larsen-Hall family has everything: healthy children, a stable marriage, a lucrative career for Brantley, and the means for Daphne to pursue her art full time. Their deluxe new Miami life has just clicked into place when Luna — the world’s first Category 6 hurricane — upends everything they have taken for granted. When the storm makes landfall, it triggers a descent of another sort. Their home destroyed, two of its members missing and finances abruptly cut off, the family finds everything they assumed about their lives now up for grabs. Swept into a mass rush of evacuees from across the South, they are transported hundreds of miles to a FEMA megashelter where their new community includes an insurance-agent-turned-drug dealer, a group of vulnerable children, and a dedicated relief worker trying to keep the peace. Will “normal” ever return?

The Exhibitionist, by Charlotte Mendelson

Meet the Hanrahan family, gathering for a momentous weekend as famous artist and notorious egoist Ray Hanrahan prepares for a new exhibition of his art — the first in many decades — and one he is sure will burnish his reputation forever. His three children will be there: eldest daughter Leah, always her father’s biggest champion; son Patrick, who has finally decided to strike out on his own; and daughter Jess, the youngest, who has her own momentous decision to make. And what of Lucia, Ray’s steadfast and selfless wife? She is an artist too, but has always had to put her roles as wife and mother first. What will happen if she decides to change? Lucia is hiding secrets of her own. As the weekend unfolds and the exhibition approaches, she must finally make a choice about which desires to follow. A furiously funny novel, The Exhibitionist is a dazzling exploration of art, sacrifice, toxic family politics, desire and personal freedom.

Café Unfiltered, by Jean-Philippe Blondel

At a classic café in the French provinces, anonymity, chance encounters and traumatic pasts collide against the muted background of global instability. Blondel, author of the bestselling The 6:41 to Paris, presents a moving fresco of intertwined destinies. In the span of 24 hours, a medley of characters retrace the fading patterns of their lives after a long disruption from COVID. A mother and son realize their vast differences, a man takes tea with a childhood friend he had once covertly fallen for, and a woman crosses paths with the ex who abandoned her in Australia. Amid it all, the café swirls like a kaleidoscope, bringing together customers, waiters and owners past and present. Within its walls and on its terrace, they examine the threads of their existence, laying bare their inner selves, their failed dreams, and their hopes for the uncertain future that awaits us all.

POETRY

Beguiled by the Frailties of Those Who Precede Us, by Stephen E. Smith

It’s best to let former North Carolina poet laureate Shelby Stephenson describe Smith’s latest volume of poetry, his eighth. “Stephen E. Smith’s poems in Beguiled by the Frailties of Those Who Precede Us exude truths so real they haunt our memories . . . Father, mother, family, past, present, future swoop and dive into the imagination the way a whale searches for deep water.”

CHILDREN’S BOOKS

The Digger and the Butterfly, by Joseph Kuefler

Sometimes it takes a new friend to remind you to slow down, listen to the river, feel the wind, appreciate the sun. This is what happens when Digger befriends a butterfly and waits patiently to see what will happen next. When the butterfly finally emerges, it’s clear that Digger and his friends have also been changed forever. A lovely story with fun science facts on the life cycle of the butterfly, it’s a perfect summer read. (Ages 2-7.)

Sunshine: A Graphic Novel, by Jarrett Krosoczka

When Jarrett Krosoczka was in high school, he was part of a program that sent students to be counselors at a camp for seriously ill kids and their families. At Camp Sunshine he engaged in some of the usual rituals that come with being a camp counselor (wilderness challenges, spooky campfire stories, an extremely stinky mascot costume), but he also got a chance to meet some extraordinary kids facing extraordinary circumstances. This gem from the author of Hey, Kiddo will have you laughing out loud and crying in public. (Ages 12 and up.)

The Jules Verne Prophecy, by Larry Schwarz and Iva-Marie Palmer

When Owen finds himself stuck in Paris for the summer with his mom, he is sure the whole vacation will be a boring flop until a mysterious skateboarder, a rare Jules Verne book and a few new friends turn things around. This wild ride of an adventure journeys through the most amazing sites in Paris, including the Eiffel Tower, the catacombs and a secret skate park. (Ages 9-13.) PS

Compiled by Kimberly Daniels Taws and Angie Tally.

2023 Bookshelf Department

The Omnivorous Reader

Discovering a Dutch Master

A life story ringed with mystery

By Stephen E. Smith

Convincing a friend that a work of art you love is worthy of his or her attention can be disheartening.

You: “See the inner darkness and the outer brightness of the painting, how the sense of circumambient air drifts evenly through the scene?”

Friend: “How much is that thing worth anyway?”

Our unabashed enthusiasm is too often dashed by indifference. Or, worse yet, by that Antiques Roadshow inclination to ignore anything other than a painting’s monetary value.

Given our confusion as to exactly what art is and what it means, it’s little wonder we tend to reject uninvited suggestions as to what we should like or dislike. That’s the challenge facing art critic Laura Cumming in Thunderclap: A Memoir of Art and Life & Sudden Death. Since childhood, she has been enamored of A View of Delft, With a Musical Instrument Seller’s Stall, by Dutch artist Carel Fabritius (1622-1654). Now she wants us to love it, too.

Cumming has been the art critic for The Observer and was a senior editor of the New Statesman magazine, both British publications. Her book The Vanishing Velazques was a New York Times bestseller. In her latest offering, she writes with keen insight and obvious affection for the Dutch masters — Rembrandt, Vermeer, Avercamp, Ruisdael, De Hooch, etc. — but the focus of her memoir is on the less celebrated Fabritius, known for having painted The Goldfinch, The Sentry, as well as A View of Delft. Fabritius is considered a minor Dutch master, primarily because so little of his work survives, but Cumming maintains that he’s no less accomplished than Vermeer and Rembrandt, and that he’s deserving of greater recognition. Unfortunately, precious little is known about Fabritius’ life, and it’s assumed that most of his paintings have not survived. We do, however, know about his death.

The “Thunderclap” in Cumming’s title alludes to an explosion near a convent in the city of Delft, where 80,000 pounds of stored gunpowder exploded on Monday, October 12, 1654. The detonation injured a thousand, destroyed hundreds of wooden homes and left a hundred people dead, including Fabritius, his apprentice and the subject of the portrait he was painting at the time. Fortunately, his best-known painting, The Goldfinch, was rescued from the rubble.

Although Fabritius was a student of Rembrandt, he’s seldom mentioned by his contemporaries, and documentation concerning his personal life is sparse. His wife and child died early, and, like most Dutch painters, Fabritius was deeply in debt. His isolation is reflected in The Goldfinch, his lesser-known The Sentry and two brooding self-portraits, which are little enough upon which to base a lengthy aesthetic exposition. “I go round and round this tiny tale,” Cumming writes, “this life circling out from the village of Middenbeemster, ringed with mystery. It is a man’s whole life. Yet I can get no more of him, except perhaps through his art. He is like a suicide who takes his secrets away with him.”

The “memoir” element of Thunderclap focuses on Cumming’s father, James Cumming (1922-1991), a painter of “semi-figurative art.” Cumming admired her father’s artistic dedication, but his inclusion in the narrative seems mildly intrusive when explicating the likes of the Dutch masters. Certainly, his influence is felt in the love Cumming has for art, but the connection to her narrative is tenuous at best.

But Cumming recalls with pleasure the art she discovered growing up in Scotland, and the magnificence of the paintings she observed on a childhood visit to the Netherlands. The bulk of her beautifully written text is devoted to explicating the art produced by those Dutch masters, and the book offers colorful images of the paintings she explicates.

Americans, for all our lack of aesthetic depth, are nonetheless capable of appreciating how art relates to our everyday lives. Grant Wood’s American Gothic, for example, is an immensely popular masterpiece that illustrates through the subtle use of symbolism most of our aspirations and contradictions — the individual vs. collective wisdom, religion, the American Dream, the virtues of hard work, the relationship between the sexes, upward social mobility, etc. — and the subtle social criticism in Childe Hassam’s Washington Arch in Spring is apparent to any careful observer. Ethnocentric tendencies aside, it’s possible to discern much about the cultural history of a foreign country by studying its art. This is where Cumming’s insights are essential.

Her description of De Hooch’s The Courtyard of a House in Delft is representative of her work: “. . . the brickwork lying in its separate courses, the paint exactly imitating mortar; the dusty blue of the weeds and ivy, the clear light of the street; then the wonderful set of rhyming shapes — the scarlet shutter on one side, its wooden counterpart on the other; the oval window in the stonework and its glass twin in the hallway, the recession of arch inside arch inside arch that takes the eye right through the corridor and out in the street of Delft.”

Reading Cumming’s meticulous descriptions opens the reader’s perception of the accompanying paintings. Her precise prose takes readers on an excursion through the Rijksmuseum and the Golden Age of Dutch Art. It’s a tour worth every ounce of effort.

No book, especially a book on art, is for everyone. But Thunderclap comes close. Keep an open mind. And if you’re not interested in art, you can take solace in the fact that the masterpieces Cumming presents are priceless, deserving of a jubilant Antiques Roadshow “Wow!” with the turn of every page.

Thunderclap: A Memoir of Art and Life & Sudden Death will be in bookstores in mid-July. If you find it enthralling, you might also enjoy Donna Tartt’s 2014 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Goldfinch. PS

Stephen E. Smith’s latest book, Beguiled by the Frailties of Those Who Precede Us, is available from Kelsay Books, Amazon and The Country Bookshop.

2023 Department Omnivorous Reader

Creators of N.C.

The Art of Life

Perseverance with paint and canvas

By Wiley Cash

Photographs By Mallory Cash

In 2013, painter Tom Ward went to the beach to die. He and his wife, Mary, both natives of Long Island, New York, had been living in Durham for 11 years when he was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, more commonly known as ALS, a disease that affects the nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord. Over time, people with ALS lose control of their muscles, including the muscles used to eat, speak and breathe. Most die of respiratory failure within three to five years.

“I didn’t know how long I was going to live,” Tom says one afternoon in late May while we are sitting in his living room in Wilmington, several of the gorgeous paintings he’s completed over the years hanging on the walls around us. He smiles a wry smile. “And I kept thinking, It’ll be too bad if I croak in Durham.”

“We’re beach people,” he says. “We love the beach. When we were young and dating, even after we were married, we spent a lot of time on the Long Island beaches on the South Shore and the North Shore. So when I got the diagnosis we came out to Wilmington and looked around. And that’s how we got here.”

Only 10 percent of those diagnosed with ALS live beyond a decade, and Tom can be counted among those few. His disease is mercifully slow moving, and some days he feels well enough to take a trip to the beach with Mary’s assistance to paint en plein air; Fort Fisher is a favorite spot. Other days, when his body does not feel like his own, he works from home, taking his motorized wheelchair into his studio, where he moves onto a padded chair positioned in front of his easel. Throughout his battle with ALS, and its attendant and unpredictable ups and downs, painting has been a constant in Tom’s life. So has Mary’s support and advocacy.

In 2016 Mary was named a fellow by the Elizabeth Dole Foundation, whose mission it is to empower and support the military caregivers who care for America’s ill, wounded or injured veterans. A former Marine (Is there really such a thing as a former Marine?), Tom, like other veterans, is two times more likely than a civilian to develop ALS. Mary has spent years advocating for caregivers like herself and for veterans like Tom, even authoring three books on issues from navigating veterans benefits to service dogs to her own’s family’s experiences with war after the couple’s son served in Iraq and Afghanistan.

But it’s not in her national efforts that Mary’s support for Tom is most apparent. It is more evident in the small moments of their day-to-day lives: her leaving the conversation to get him a glass of water; her gently correcting his memory or assisting him as he parses the details of one of my questions. And Tom is just as devoted to Mary as she is to him, supporting her through two graduate degrees and careers as diverse as a public school teacher and a hospital administrator. It was the latter position that caused the couple to move from New York to Durham after she accepted a job at Duke Hospital.

But as much as their relationship is based on intangible evidence of love and support, the larger moments still loom in their shared past, perhaps none larger than the moment in 1993, after 13 years of marriage, when Tom contracted encephalitis and, after a lengthy treatment, showed signs of cognitive impairment that affected his executive functions. Suddenly, a man who’d served in the Marines and forged a career in risk management for an insurance company in Manhattan was having trouble parsing step-by-step instructions and remembering simple tasks like picking up their 9-year-old daughter and 10-year-old son from school. Tom’s symptoms forced him to retire from a busy job, and he suddenly found himself seemingly without purpose for the first time in his life.

“When our kids were growing up, I had to appear to them to be industrious in some way,” he says. “That was just my personal rule. I couldn’t sit on the couch and give into the thing and let that thing rule me, let the fatigue rule me.”

A year or so into Tom’s battle with the long-term symptoms of encephalitis, he and Mary found themselves in an art gallery not far from their home in upstate New York. Tom had always appreciated art, but he’ll be the first to admit that he didn’t know much about it.

“I thought all painting was called impressionism,” he says, laughing. “I didn’t know there was something called classical realism or other styles of painting. I thought impressionism meant painting like someone would think all cars are Chevys without knowing about Buicks or Pontiacs or Peugeots.”

Even though Tom didn’t know much about painting, that day in the gallery he couldn’t help but be struck by the work of an artist who signed their paintings “V. Walsh.” Tom approached the gallery owner and learned that V. Walsh was a woman named Virginia. On impulse, Tom expressed an interest in studying under Walsh, and he left his phone number with the gallery owner. Within a few weeks he and Virginia Walsh were setting up their easels side by side, a master and an apprentice with zero experience.

I ask Tom what drew him to Walsh’s work, what it was about her paintings that day in the gallery that caused him to make a decision that would change his life.

“She turned a form,” he says, referring to a painter’s ability to give the illusion of depth on a flat surface. “It was a painting of a plum that had a quarter sliced out, and the slice was laying as a half-moon shape on a tabletop. It was the light striking the flesh of the plum and the color that she put there. And then you could see the interior of the plum where the slice had been removed. Her use of color was just so perfect. It just grabs the eye. That’s what made me say, ‘Wow, that’s it. I want to do that.’”

Walsh agreed to work with Tom, but their time together got off to a rocky start. It was Walsh’s practice to educate by example, and she and Tom would regularly set up their easels and paint en plein air together for hours at a time. She was particular in the way she wanted his paints and materials organized, but to her frustration, Tom seemed unwilling to comply. Walsh ended up calling Mary in frustration to break the news that she couldn’t work with Tom because of his obstinate disposition. When Mary discovered that Tom hadn’t shared his struggles with executive function with his new mentor, she told the teacher that her pupil wasn’t being obstinate; he simply didn’t have the ability to comply without explicit, patient direction. Things went more smoothly after that, and Walsh and Tom continued to work together, painting outdoors through a number of seasons to exhibit for Tom the exquisite yet too often unnoticed changes the natural world undergoes when one truly pays attention.

Both his attention to detail and his deeply felt portrayals of the natural world are evident in Tom’s work almost 30 years after his lessons with Virginia Walsh, though sometimes his ALS makes it difficult for him to render detail as easily as he once could. Take the use of his palette knife when he works with it, rather than a brush, to apply a smooth layer of paint to the canvas.

“I’m just not getting the cut of the knife in a way that portrays what I’m seeing in my mind,” he says. “That’s ALS. The thought in my brain that tells my hand what to do either gets lost completely or is received in a garbled fashion. So my hand’s not really doing what I’m asking it to do.”

But, just as he has throughout his life, whether as a Marine or a businessman or a new painter struggling with organizing his paints and materials, Tom finds a way to adapt. And, as usual, Mary is by his side. No matter what comes next, it will happen to them together. And it will happen by the sea. PS

Wiley Cash is the Alumni Author-in-Residence at the University of North Carolina at Asheville. His new novel, When Ghosts Come Home, is available wherever books are sold.

2023 Department The Creators of N.C.